 history, which is a
thing hardly to be predicted even from the completest knowledge of
characteristics. For the tragedy of our lives is not created entirely from
within. »Character,« says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms -
»character is destiny.« But not the whole of our destiny. Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark, was speculative and irresolute, and we have a great tragedy in
consequence. But if his father had lived to a good old age, and his uncle had
died an early death, we can conceive Hamlet's having married Ophelia, and got
through life with a reputation of sanity, notwithstanding many soliloquies, and
some moody sarcasms towards the fair daughter of Polonius, to say nothing of the
frankest incivility to his father-in-law.
    Maggie's destiny, then, is at present hidden, and we must wait for it to
reveal itself like the course of an unmapped river; we only know that the river
is full and rapid, and that for all rivers there is the same final home. Under
the charm of her new pleasures, Maggie herself was ceasing to think, with her
eager prefiguring imagination, of her future lot; and her anxiety about her
first interview with Philip was losing its predominance: perhaps, unconsciously
to herself, she was not sorry that the interview had been deferred.
    For Philip had not come the evening he was expected, and Mr. Stephen Guest
brought word that he was gone to the coast - probably, he thought, on a
sketching expedition; but it was not certain when he would return. It was just
like Philip - to go off in that way without telling any one. It was not until
the twelfth day that he returned, to find both Lucy's notes awaiting him: he had
left before he knew of Maggie's arrival.
    Perhaps one had need be nineteen again to be quite convinced of the feelings
that were crowded for Maggie into those twelve days - of the length to which
they were stretched for her by the novelty of her experience in them, and the
varying attitudes of her mind. The early days of an acquaintance almost always
have this importance for us, and fill up a larger space in our memory than
longer subsequent periods, which have been less filled with discovery and new
impressions. There were not many hours in those ten days in which Mr. Stephen
Guest was not seated by Lucy's side, or standing near her at the piano, of
accompanying her on some out-door excursion: his attentions were clearly
becoming more assiduous; and that was what every
